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34. Frank Ocean

Def Jam bascially signed Frank Ocean and let him sit on the shelf. Rather than languish like oh so many artists, Ocean took matters into his own hands and dropped nostolgia/ULTRA for free on Tumblr around the same time Weeknd dropped House of Balloons and together they changed the sound of R&B. And last year, he dropped his major label debut album Channel Orange and established himself as one of the most important voices in R&B's new breed.